While at the PAX East convention the end of last month, I got to attend a 20 minute game demo of the new Firaxis/2K game Civilization V. Being a huge Civ fan, this was one of the highlights of my time there. Hidden away in the back of the 2K booth was a small room with red chairs and huge TV screen along with two of the Devs from the Civ V team. Set to launch in the fall, what we saw was a pre-alpha build with a focus on combat. The other win scenarios were still under production.

The new game engine that Civ V is built on will give it a whole new look and landscape, more realistic then ever before. The maps are very realistic looking and will include Africa, Asia and America. While game play is still similar to the originals, there will be some differences based on what was learned in the Civilization Revolution game. Advisers will be back, giving game hints and suggestions. During our demo, the adviser popped up and told us that we found a great spot to build a city, which we did. The tiles are now hexagon shaped which give the units a more natural movement pattern. As cities expand with culture, the tiles will expand in the most logical places and only one at a time. Another change is that a city can buy expansion tiles with gold. Notifications no longer pop up and intrude the game, they just let you know that they are ready and when you want, you can bring them up and choose what you want to build next.

Scouts can also discover ruins and secrets as well as minor countries known as City States. Examples of these are Stockholm and Venice. City states will play a big role during the game, you can friend them and trade for bonuses like food and gold or conquer them but take the chance of consequences like a war with another country if the City State was their friend. When you do meet a new country, the leaders go to a cut scene and talk to you in their native language (with subtitles). This would be full screen not a pop up window. We saw George Washington in his office and a Japanese leader standing in a field of grass (speaking Japanese of course). The AI are very world aware in this game and not deterministic. They will reroute a strategy if their usual tactics are not working.

As I mentioned in the beginning, the demo focused on war. The stack of doom is gone and units can only occupy one unit per tile, while this doesn’t sound like much, on the screen each unit consists of about 12 soldiers. This new type of play takes the war out of the cities and into the battlefield. It takes new thinking and strategy to place your troops in the most advantageous places. Placing archers behind swordsmen and catapults behind axeman. We got to witness some of the fighting and you can zoom in pretty close to your troops to see all the action. We saw the arrows fly over several tiles and kill the enemy. We saw the catapults let loose and the rocks go flying into the cities. It’s really pretty cool, almost like a mini movie.

One of the final points they brought up was the mod-ability of the game. They are providing powerful tools that will open mods to the players. They will be hosting these mods on their own servers so while you are in the game, you can access them, download and play them. I can’t wait for the full game to come out, it looks like it will be early September.